Environment:Testtimescaling Testtimescaling github io Python 3 Runtime

Knowledge Sources	update_arxiv_citations.py Python requests
Domains	Infrastructure, Data_Retrieval
Last Updated	2026-02-14 00:00 GMT

Overview

Python 3.x runtime environment with the requests library, required for executing the arXiv citation fetching script.

Description

The update_arxiv_citations.py script requires a Python 3 interpreter with access to the requests HTTP library and the standard library modules json. The script uses f-strings (Python 3.6+), type hints in function signatures (Python 3.5+), and the requests.get() API with timeout parameter.

On the GitHub Actions runner (ubuntu-latest), Python 3 and requests are pre-installed. When running locally for development or testing, the requests package must be installed manually.

Usage

This environment is required whenever the Automated Citation Tracking workflow runs the citation update script. It is invoked by the workflow step:

      - name: Update citation counts
        run: |
          python .github/scripts/update_arxiv_citations.py

System Requirements

Category	Requirement	Notes
Language	Python >= 3.6	f-strings and type hints used in the script
Network	Outbound HTTPS to `api.semanticscholar.org`	Required for citation count retrieval
Filesystem	Write access to repository root	Writes `arxiv_citations.json` to the working directory

Dependencies

Python Packages

requests (any version; used for requests.get() with timeout parameter)
json (standard library; used for json.dump())

Credentials

No credentials are required by the Python script itself. The Semantic Scholar API is accessed without authentication (public endpoint). However, the surrounding workflow context requires:

secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN: Used by the git commit/push step after the script runs (not by the script itself).

Quick Install

# For local development/testing:
pip install requests

# On GitHub Actions ubuntu-latest, requests is pre-installed.
# No setup step is needed in the workflow.

Code Evidence

Import statements from .github/scripts/update_arxiv_citations.py:L1-2:

import requests
import json

Python 3.6+ f-string usage from .github/scripts/update_arxiv_citations.py:L9:

url = f"https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/ARXIV:{arxiv_id}?fields=citationCount"

Type hint usage from .github/scripts/update_arxiv_citations.py:L4:

def fetch_arxiv_citation_count(arxiv_id: str) -> int:

Workflow invocation from .github/workflows/update_citations.yml:L28-29:

      - name: Update citation counts
        run: |
          python .github/scripts/update_arxiv_citations.py

Common Errors

Error Message	Cause	Solution
`ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'requests'`	`requests` not installed in the Python environment	Run `pip install requests`
`SyntaxError: invalid syntax` (at f-string)	Running with Python 2.x or Python < 3.6	Use Python 3.6 or higher
`[Warning] Failed to fetch citation for ArXiv:...`	Network error or API unavailability	Script handles this gracefully, returns 0. Check network access to `api.semanticscholar.org`

Compatibility Notes

Python 2 incompatibility: The script uses f-strings and type hints, which are not available in Python 2.x. Ensure the python command resolves to Python 3.
No virtual environment required: The script has a single external dependency (requests) and does not conflict with other packages.
Offline mode: The script will not crash without network access; it catches all exceptions and returns 0 for any failed API call.

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